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Dessert

A Common Plum Cake

A yeast-based cake with currants, flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, and rose-water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Common Plum Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, nutmeg or mace, and yeast.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs well.

  3. Melt the butter and warm the milk, then mix them into the dry ingredients.

  4. Let the mixture rise for 1 hour in a warm place.

  5. Add the currants and mix well.

Bake

  1. Butter a baking tin and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its gluten network sets in the oven.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter and helping it set as it bakes.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the batter rise before baking.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps the crumb stay moist.
Milk
Moistens the flour and helps form the batter's structure and texture.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and tart fruit flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise for 1 hour in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to ferment and produce the gas that lifts the batter. If it is too cold, the cake will rise poorly and turn out dense.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, nutmeg, egg, rose, butter, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, nutmeg, egg, rose, butter, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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